Something New
by bhut
Summary: AU: Grant was able to save Kara's life post S2, and now, after the alien world, S.H.I.E.L.D. learns about this. Meanwhile, the FitzSimmons just might get married, (to each other), after all...
1. Chapter 1

**Something New**

 _Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners._

When he emerged from the pod, carrying Coulson and half-carrying Fitz, looking tired, even weary, himself, and dressed in combat gear (that suited him well), for a moment Skye imagined this to be some pre-Hydra mission gone right for a change, and almost broke into a tiny little smile - almost. She remembered what time and place this was, and did her best to look blank. Judging by the odd look that flashed even more briefly on Grant's face before it snapped back into some weary robot mode, she wasn't sure that she had accomplished that, in time.

For his own part, Grant just frogmarched Fitz (and still carried Coulson) into a corner of the jet and sat down there, with visible relief, before closing his eyes and just sitting there, without engaging in any conversation or whatever.

Silence fell.

For several minutes, perhaps because the scene was so surreal, nobody among S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents broke it either, until - "Leo?" Jemma asked in a tiny voice.

"Yeah?" Leo replied in a voice that was louder than Jemma's, but right now? A year-old kitten would have a louder voice than Jemma did.

"What, what has happened?" she still insisted, however. "Where's Will?"

"The alien got him, he is dead," Leo replied, sounding rather miserable himself...sort of. Apparently, he didn't feel about Will the same way that Jemma had. "I'm sorry, we were too late."

Jemma half-collapsed and half-imploded, just sitting down onto the floor into a crumpled heap of misery and sobbing quietly and softly: talk about adding an insult to an injury.

"Oh, for the sake of someone, you've got it wrong," Grant suddenly broke the silence. "Malick's as crazy as Whitehall was; he managed to get the whole thing wrong _and_ backwards. The alien isn't a monster, rather it is a symbiote. It needs a host, preferably a sentient, human host to fully live. It makes the host better, stronger, gives them abilities, but in exchange it slowly fuses with the host: the two become one, someone new."

Slowly, as if he was in pain, (and perhaps he was) Grant shifted around and looked at Jemma who was frozen in mid-sob - that is she was listening to Ward with open mouth and teary eyes, but the tears were slowly drying out now and her old self was slowly coming back.

"Now the astranaut?" Grant continued slowly and patiently and firmly. "Yeah, you wouldn't have liked the original man - he was a lot like me, only without Garrett's... _particular_ training... Jemma, you never wondered why a man who hadn't had a woman in ages didn't try to push himself onto you?"

Jemma turned scarlet and did her best to pretend that she had assumed that the fabled ambiguous S.H.I.E.L.D. luck had ended the right side up on her case for a change.

"Well, yes,you _did_ get lucky," Grant confessed, mildly. "See, the alien here, in this case, it isn't exactly like the Asgardians or anything; it is more like a sentient plant, or perhaps even a fungus. To reproduce, it needs to fuse with...a person, preferably. A member of the animal kingdom, to sound more scientific. Jemma, Leo, the alien wants a threesome. With the two of you."

There was an even more intense pause than when someone just offers to have a threesome. "And now you have the alien," Fitz finally broke the silence. "Who's the threesome you're going to have it with?"

"No one," Grant didn't back down from the younger man's gaze. "This is a temporary arrangement - I'm not going to keep Jemma's friend for too long. Maybe if we were talking about Hunter and Morse, who _had_ done threesomes in the past...maybe. But the two of you? No, just no."

"Are we supposed to be impressed," Skye began flatly, "because you're not making any sense-"

"No," Grant shook his head. "Skye - commander Johnson, you have grown even more beautiful than before, but we are done. You shot me 4 times, I got the message, I moved on and so had you. Nowadays, it isn't all about you, you know?"

"Kara Lynn is dead," Skye said quietly.

"Is she?" Grant replied, politely. "Skye, you may not know it, but I was one of Coulson's pallbearers. It was supposed to be John, but his own health was failing, he was honestly _not_ up to it, and so I ended up carrying the coffin up with Trip, though neither of us either spoke about it, for a lot of different reasons. The coffin was white, with silver handles and there were matching ribbons, and it didn't contain a dummy or even a LMD - John and Victoria had checked. And then, less than 2 months after - I meet him, and he was alive, fully alive, as he is now."

"Then why isn't he moving?" Skye spoke quietly.

"Grant paralyzed him. He claims that it is only for a week, but who knows?" Leo spoke up. "I was busy with the alien, Grant and Coulson finally fought it out with each other, and Coulson almost killed him, but Grant, somehow, I don't know-"

"My love is stronger than his hate," Grant said, chuckling, (though with very little humor in his chuckles). "It seems that as he tried to become more like me, I became more like him instead. That was unexpected, I confess."

"He's nothing like you," Bobbi exploded. "You delusional-"

"Zip it," Grant caught Bobbi's gaze, held it, and the blonde Amazon was the first to back down. "People change, I think someone, maybe Shakespeare, actually mentioned it in a play. I feel that no one here really intended to become who they became." He grimaced. "Especially Mack: for some reason the alien insists that the two of them are cousins. Not commander Johnson, not her people, just him. That's some knowledge I could've lived without, I think."

Silence returned as everyone just looked at Mack, who blinked and did his best to look stupified (which he was). Not even Grant spoke now; the man actually just leaned back and sat there, clearly dealing with some internal issues (maybe the alien). The silence finally was broken by Fitz.

"What about you?" he asked Grant, looking at him face-on. "I believe that I saw your true face, you know, and it isn't evil. Will you stay with Hydra if you say that Kara isn't dead. She hated it-"

"Which is why I don't, I mean I won't," Grant exhaled - heavily. "Me and Kara are about done with Malick and his vision of madness. It is too close to Whitehall's, you know?"

"And then what? You told Skye once that while S.H.I.E.L.D. is deliberating, Hydra has already fired the shot-"

"Because it has done all the deliberating beforehand, yes," Grant agreed. "However, I admit, in my case it was a lot. I had to ensure that Kara lived. I had to deal with Lash, because some friends of Campbell over there had hired me to. I had to deal with Werner and his mother. It isn't easy, juggling so many strands at once, but you know? In the end I had made a pretty coherent plan."

"I let Lash go," Jemma said quietly, but defiantly.

"Excuse me?" Grant raised an eyebrow.

"Back there, in Malick's castle. I let him go," Jemma repeated defiantly, before toning down her defiance - a lot. "He called almost everyone there, not just Hydra people."

"Well then, the next time I run across him, I won't do any elaborate exposing plans, I'll just kill him," Grant shrugged, before giving the Cavalry a straight-on look. "Sorry about this, do with me what you will, but I will kill him."

"How about you call me over and I'll kill him instead?" the Cavalry's voice actually wasn't hostile. "Andrew... Lash... he managed to do one worse than _you_ , and that's saying something."

"Deal," Grant nodded. "So, uh, when Fitz and Simmons are getting married?"

"Er," said Leo and looked at Jemma. "I'm not sure. Jemma used to speak about a schedule or something, but that was before we got onto the Bus. Jem?"

"Leo," Jemma sagged. "I don't know if we should."

There was a pause as everyone stared in disbelief at the female half of the FitzSimmons. "I mean," Jemma gulped and continued gamely, "is it worth it? We're already married in all but the name, and, and, and I'm scared Leo. Of losing you, of losing myself, of everything. S.H.I.E.L.D. is everything that we expected it to be, and more. It's just that-"

"Book knowledge isn't everything," Grant suggested, quite kindly, actually. "There's also experience, and it is something else."

"Jem," Leo said quietly, "are you afraid of...happiness?"

"Yes!" Jemma said, pretty promptly. "I am. What if we're destined for constant sorrow or something? Leo, you're my happiness, I cannot lose you!"

"You won't," Leo replied firmly. "We'll be here, together, until the end," and he kissed her firmly. On the lips.

Jemma's eyes widened, she blinked, turned red, white, red, and promptly wrapped herself around Leo. Sadly, the Scottsman wasn't strong enough to support them both, and they fell down, together, still embraced, among several claps and wolf-whistles.

"That's enough," Melinda muttered, as she helped the blushing scientists get to their feet, since she was the closest to them. "Save some for later."

Leo and Jemma blushed prettily and said nothing.

As everyone continued to congratulate them - properly, now - Skye...not so much seethed, as was just jealous. It should be her and Lincoln doing the kiss, not the FitzSimmons...or at least - not just the FitzSimmons. She honestly had intended to kiss Lincoln, she really did, but with Grant here too, and behaving as a half-way decent human (even though he was delusional about Kara still being alive and himself being something of a mastermind), she didn't really feel like celebrating. The fact that Fitz - and by extension, Simmons - seemed to treat Grant like a rather decent human too didn't help either.

Well, there had been rumors of Coulson offering Grant the T.A.H.I.T.I. procedure...possibly. Maybe this time they'll actually put Grant through it? Fitz - and by extension, Simmons - just might be able to talk Grant into going through it, especially once he realized that agent 33 was dead...

"We've landed," Lance Hunter spoke over the jet's comm.-link. "And we've got company."

And that was when things got weird.

 _TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

**Something New (part 2)**

 _Disclamer: see previous chapter._

Once the jet landed, Grant got onto his feet and quickly exited the plane. Coulson, FYI, was left behind, still immobile.

"Oh, he's, um, paralyzed," Leo confessed, sheepishly, to Melinda and the others. "Grant used some sort of a Chinese system, supposedly, to paralyze him. It was somewhere in the face, or on the face-"

"I got it," Melinda replied, as she checked Coulson for vital signs (and found them). "Yup, he is still alive. Maybe Grant is turning over a new leaf - sort of."

"Great. Maybe if he keeps it up we can use T.A.H.I.T.I. to make him into a real boy," Lance muttered. "Or maybe he was just spilling and entertaining us with his lies while his Hydra buddies ambushed us as we landed."

"What Hydra buddies?" Skye blinked. If Grant hadn't changed after all...it was not a fun thought, at all. He just got to be a better liar, that is all. Skye shook her head. So much for redemptive dreams.

"The von Strucker boy, for example," Lance replied, 'helpfully'. "So much for your plans for him, Bob."

"Really?" Bobbi sounded genuinely surprised. "Hah. I didn't really have any plans for him; I just felt sorry for him - he got caught between Grant and us and got quite beat-up-"

"Bobbi?" Skye said sourly. "This is a Hydra technique - beating their agents up for further realism. Garrett used to rough Grant up quite badly, I remember. Looks like we fell for the same story, again."

"Well, the coma and the story about Andrew-or-Lash helped too," Bobbi said defensively. "Either way, I was just hoping that he would be cooperative - you know, we give him protection and he helps?"

"Doesn't look like he needs any," Skye replied as the team quietly gathered to look at the meeting of...Skye didn't know whom, exactly, but still. Werner was telling something to Grant, very animatedly...sadly, it was in German, so Skye, for one, had trouble following them - she still didn't get the knack on languages. Not that she really needed it, as Werner gave the bigger man his sniper rifle, and Grant all but smelled it, before smiling at Werner, and rather fondly, too, without any malice. For some reason this really bothered Skye, (possibly the FitzSimmons too), and so she turned towards May, (who was still helping Coulson to recover), and asked her: "So, what are we waiting for? Shouldn't we charge at the Hydra? _Again_?"

"Kara?!" Grant yelled from the outside (in English, this time) and the situation changed. Two women, who looked somewhat familiar, though with the shaky light outside it was hard to tell, rolled forth a very complex and advanced looking wheelchair, complete with an IV. A third person was sitting in it. Grant promptly walked over to that character and kissed them on the lips. For several moments he just stood there, lip-locked, and then he moved back, with a spring in his step that wasn't there before. The person in the wheelchair, on the other hand, just sat there, for some moments, and then their body began to twist and turn, as IV drips and other similar pieces just popped out of their body, and their inner organs and bones knit together or were fixed anew.

"Finally!" the person, the woman said as she stood on her own two feet now and beaming a bright smile, of a truly happy person. "I'm whole again! Thanks, Grant - you came!"

"Of course I did, I promised, remember?" Grant said brightly, as he gave her a hug - and lifted her off the ground. "And people thought I was delusional, people thought that I could only kill, you know? Considering that for the last years of his life I kept John alive very well, I have to disagree with them, oh yeah!"

"Oh baby," Kara rubbed her cheek against his, very fondly. "You're the man. You're my man too! Morse tried to bury us both, but we broke all of her tricks and traps, we broke them all!"

"Yes we have," Grant nodded, in a tone of voice that could only be described as amused. "Cavalry, Skye, Coulson and others? Sorry about this - Kara isn't as even mannered towards _her_ ex, as I am towards _mine_. But then again, she had been in a _real_ relationship - I wasn't. And speaking of real," he turned back to Werner, "where's Malick?"

"Over there," Lincoln, who was partially trying to posture before Kara Lynn, immediately snapped to business, and pointed out a...body bag. Slowly, also completely serious now, Grant walked over and lifted the cover.

"Three bullets, four," he examined the body. "Werner, you really listened, didn't you?"

"Gideon...Malick...he was like an uncle to me, and then he sold me back to you with nary a thought. He knew what you've done to Fanucci, and he sold me back to you with nary a thought," Werner said with a mixture of genuine vitriol, bitterness and hurt. "Sir, you were right about Hydra all along; so's mother, and I owe you an apology too."

"Glad to hear this," spoke a very familiar voice, and Rosalind Price, dressed in her trademark colors, black and white, appeared herself in the flickering light. "Mr. Ward, 'Sir', how's director Coulson?"

"At worst, he'll be paralyzed for the next week, 7 days," Grant shrugged, "at best - the Cavalry will snap him out of it...even as we speak, even if she hadn't, already - she's formidable like that."

"Yes she is," Rosalind admitted, with some sourness. "Now about Malick-"

Grant half-turned away from her and exhaled. Or, more correctly, he took a deep breath and...grew. Not by much, maybe by 10% or so, but he was already big, so now he was even bigger. The fact that his skin darkened to the point that he resembled a more humanoid version of Tolkien's balrog monster made things worse - and then he exhaled fire. (Rather than electricity as Lincoln would, or just generic energy as Lash). The fire was hot - very hot. It hit Malick's corpse and it spread out - quickly, consuming it in a matter of moments without a trace.

"There - that's done," he nodded to Rosalind, who nodded back, solemnly, with complete nonchalance, as if this sort of thing was a regular fixture in her life. "Kara?"

"I feel great, Grant," the ex-agent 33 replied cheerfully, "but the alien isn't happy - it is whispering nasty things into my mind, just as Whitehall and Bakshi had with their nasty device!"

"Let me," Rosalind said calmly: she walked up to the younger woman, grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and spoke several phrases in a language that wasn't of the Earth.

"That helped," Kara Lynn blinked. "But the alien is upset now. It, it wanted to make me _better_. I don't want to be _better_ ; I want to be as I am now."

"And you are," Rosalind said firmly. "But now, let us take our leave. Ms. Morse?" she looked away and met the blonde woman's eyes first. "Tell director Coulson that baroness von Strucker, Wolfgang's widow, has really enjoyed and appreciated his company, and will gladly meet him again at my office. For now, I - and my people - will take our leave." And with those words she was gone.

"...Ok, I did not see this coming," Lance said 'smartly'.

Bobbi slapped him.

 _TBC_


	3. Chapter 3

**Something New (part 3)**

 _Disclaimer: see first chapter._

The mood in the agency, especially among its top members, was rather sombre after all was said and done (though it wasn't them who had done most of the talking).

"So, Grant wasn't lying when he suggested that he was very busy doing whatever it was he was doing instead of bothering us," Jemma decided to go for the obvious. "Hah."

Leo looked askance at his wife-to-be. "Hah?" he asked simply.

"Yes," Jemma nodded promptly. "It's new - being used as an actual prop in one of his schemes, rather than as a goal. The last time around, back in the Arctic? It was different. Guess he finally found people that he belongs with, and it's Hydra...right?" she turned to Lincoln. "I believe that he mentioned you on the plane. You want to tell us how?"

"A group of my former friends is rebuilding the settlement," Lincoln shrugged, "after your war with Jiaying has trashed it, but Lash is getting in the way. I remembered this character from my Arctic experience and he seemed to be competent, and Raina agreed. So we hired him to get rid of Lash, and it almost worked - until you let Lash out again," he told Jemma (and the others).

"Sorry about that, but it's Grant Ward! He's evil...sort of," Jemma protested, weakly.

"Yes, well, according to _Jiaying you_ were evil, sort of," Lincoln shook his head. "I am working with you; I am enjoying working with you, but the people I left behind back in Li Shi? They're not me, I'm not them, and they have no problem working with anyone, you or otherwise. Grant, Werner and others - they are looking for allies _against_ Hydra and especially Malick, so the council of Elders was quite happy to cooperate, especially once the von Strucker family began to invest into us, literally and otherwise-"

"Then why are _you here_?" Daisy(/Skye) asked sourly.

"Because someone needs to run interference and whatnot between us and you," Lincoln shrugged. "Between your mother and Lash Li Shi no longer feels like home, so I might as well try and see if I find one here. Plus you seem to like me, so yeah?" he told her.

"Yeah," the young woman told sourly. It had been sad enough when Grant slept with May, and courted her too, (in a fashion) because it was Hydra business. Now Lincoln had come and became friends with everyone and all (with her, it was more than friends) because of InHuman business. Somehow it felt like a repetition of Grant's betrayal, done as a bad joke from a bad theater performance. But when it came to the repetitions of this sort of thing... "How are _you_ holding up, DC?"

"I slept with baroness von Strucker," Coulson spoke in a voice that could make Grant's sound lively and animated at worst of times. "I've slept with Rosalind von Strucker. Skye - I mean, Daisy, how have we missed it?"

"You didn't have _me_ research her," Daisy stated the obvious. "Considering that with Jemma on the other planet and May AWOL we were a mess, it's understandable, but you don't care, do you?"

"I dreamed of her, thought of her, ever since we thought that Grant had killed her," Coulson continued, (BTW, he had recovered from Grant's attack, thanks to May), "and in the end? It was all a plot for Grant to have his revenge on me, to make a fool of us all, and for the good baroness? I...don't know what she got out of it-"

"She got Grant - and by extention agent 33 - to train her son and to do her bidding," Melinda said blankly. "She also got Malick's alien - and now that Grant became an InHuman she got him and Kara too. She must've been laughing all along as we locked horns first with Grant and then with Gideon Malick. Clever her. Phil, on top of everything else, she got a contract with _us_ regarding the InHumans..." she suddenly whirled around and faced Lincoln. "And you know about this all along, haven't you? _Your_ elders were selling _your_ people to _Hydra_ -"

"Not exactly," Lincoln stood his ground, though he did appear nervous: an angry Cavalry wasn't someone to take lightly by anyone, after all. "Only the unsuitable ones, such as Lash, whom _you_ didn't kill. You knew that he was a killer and you washed your hands of him. At least we - the elders, Alisha, Werner - tried to save those who want to be saved and don't go all crazy. You - just was your hands of all of us save for those who can be considered useful. So please excuse us if we don't, or won't, differentiate between you and the ATCU. At least ATCU is interested in working with us."

"And we don't?" May's voice dropped dangerously low, but Campbell would not be easily cowed, it seemed. (Then again, after Lash, Melinda didn't look _too_ intimidated, admittedly.)

"Hey, so far I've been through some very interesting, exciting things," he met Melinda's gaze resolutely, "but none of them involved with my people living a better life. Therefore, agent May, the answer to your question is yes."

"Then what are you doing here?" Melinda's hackles were raised higher.

"I already answered that question," Lincoln probably realized the death emanations that were coming from May, but not too fast enough. "Remember?"

Melinda pursed her mouth and turned towards the younger woman. "Daisy, tell your man-"

"No, May, you do not get to play this card," Daisy sounded quite unimpressed by both her and Lincoln. "Not after you slept with Grant. Not after the whole mess with Andrew. Not while Coulson is clearly hurting. Not while you made a deal with Grant against Andrew - or Lash. Just no."

"I made a deal with him because Grant knows his place now; we know his place now and where he stands," May said firmly. "Lincoln, on the other hand-"

"Made his position known too," Daisy said without flinching. "You don't like it? I'm sorry, but I'm done appealing other people for the rest of the month. If you excuse me, I'm going to go to my room."

She got onto her feet and walked towards an exit, which lead towards her room. "Daisy, wait," Lincoln called out, in an obvious attempt to make things better - or perhaps because there was some demon whispering in his ear, some bad advice too, because what he said made it worse. "You-"

"Yes?" Daisy turned around, possibly expecting Lincoln to apologize - and he did. Sort of. In his own fashion.

"I've seen how you look at that man," Lincoln continued, gamely. "You and he want each other, just as your parents did. I don't know why it didn't work out between the two of you, but you clearly need release. I can help with that. Your mother was like that, too-"

"I am not my mother," Daisy snapped, as the others stared with a mix of confusion, horror, disgust and pity at Lincoln's offer. "You're not my father either-"

"It doesn't matter," Lincoln shook his head. "Your mother had many qualities, but fidelity wasn't one of them. She loved your father, but when even Gordon couldn't get him, other men would do."

"Even you?" Daisy whispered.

"No. But if you didn't come to Li Shi, then yes."

Daisy's eyes opened wide, so did her mouth but nothing came out. She abruptly turned around and practically fled.

"Well," Lance began to speak, but Lincoln shook his head and left himself.

"I'll go after him," Coulson spoke up sharply, sounding like his old self for the first time ever since Rosalind had 'died' in his arms. "May?"

"Yes, director Coulson?" his second replied, warily. There was something familiar in Coulson now, a certain steel in his gaze.

"Don't try to repair what wasn't broken in the first place, ever again," Coulson said firmly and followed the younger man.

 _TBC_


	4. Chapter 4

**Something new (part 4)**

 _Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their official owners._

Phil Coulson caught up with the younger man quickly enough - apparently Lincoln left without any particular destination in mind; he just went to clearl his head - or something along those lines. "So," Phil spoke carefully, aware that he was doing something of an improvisation here, and didn't even know where he was going, "we heard everything-"

"I wasn't trying to hide, sir," Lincoln shook his head. "You got a good thing going here, even your lady love admitted that, however grudgingly - it's just that you need to learn to share, otherwise your job will eat you alive, as it did with Jiaying. She...wasn't a bad woman, you know, I don't think that she always been as insane as she was supposed to be, yes?"

"Perhaps," Coulson rubbed his face. "We appreciate your honesty too - in the long run. Will appreciate it, perhaps, if you're a grammar Nazi-"

"Sir?" Lincoln blinked.

"I'm rumbling, never mind," Coulson shook his head. "You see, Lincoln, part of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attraction, at least in my time, when I was your age, was that it made people happy, it accomadated them, it let them join voluntarily, not unlike how the American military works."

Lincoln thought about this. "Sometimes it's the choice between it and jail," he pointed out. "And just because some choose it over jail, doesn't mean that they become better people."

"...That's actually a point that I was saving for another discussion," Coulson admitted, reluctantly, "so let's do just that, shall we? Here, I am trying to admit that I don't appear to be succeeding at this sort of thing - at making my agents happy. People seem to be joining S.H.I.E.L.D. because they have to, not because they want to, like you, for exampe."

"As opposed to-?" Lincoln prodded, quietly.

"Agent Sommers, for example. She went to join the FBI some time before the old S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen; some time after we began to rebuild it, May and I and Trip, we approached her and offered her to come back. She refused flatly, and nowadays the top brass of FBI believes that we tried, or even currently _are_ trying to poach their talent and are rather hostile to us. Right now we don't really need this; even in best of times, before we had fallen, we didn't need this, and now? Don't make me get started-"

"I don't know, sir," Lincoln's voice was respectful, but firm. "I heard how it went with Grant Ward and his brother the senator. Maybe you did want him to take Grant off his hands, but you never really cared about either of them; if you really wanted the senator in your corner, you would've tried to protect him once Grant went after him. I think that Grant was right in this regard: you just wanted him and his brother to kill each other off and be done with it - only it didn't work. You tried it again, with his other brother, and I don't know how it worked out, but in the end? Grant figured it out first, here it is the more magnaimous man who will win, and he was that man, not you."

"About this sort of thing," Coulson began with a mildness that somehow indicated something darker underneath. "You really must understand-"

Lincoln interrupted the older man by gently spinning him around, away from him. Normally, Coulson would react in a very negative way, but this time? He saw that he had been spun towards Rosalind Price, the widowed baroness von Strucker, who was had seeming come from out of nowhere (and perhaps she did, with her resources, Coulson didn't know the truth anymore), and was standing there, looking very lost and small.

"Can I tell you the truth?" she asked meekly, fiddling with her purse.

Coulson opened his mouth. He wanted to tell her that he never wanted to see her again, never wanted to meet with her again, never to talk with her again, when the old pain in his heart, which had been haunting him on and off ever since she had 'died' in his arms, flared again, and his tongue just wouldn't form those words. It was weak and wrong of him, the woman was Hydra, but he discovered that he didn't care.

"Sure, he'd be happy to," Lincoln answered instead, while the director struggled with himself, and gently pushed Coulson towards the nearby bench, while Rosalind followed them, obediently. "I'll give the two of you some privacy."

Once more Coulson opened his mouth to tell Lincoln off, but what he felt instead was gratitude, so anything else (or anything at all, really), just wouldn't come.

"Thank you," Rosalind spoke quietly to Lincoln, and as the younger man walked away for some distance (that was ok, Coulson knew that he still could handle this woman...probably), she turned back to Coulson: "Can I talk to you _now_?"

"Yes," Coulson spoke, also quietly. "So what is the truth?"

"I didn't like von Strucker, let alone love him. It was a marriage of convenience; my family were Hydra sympasizers, and the marriage was advantageous, at least back then. I did not love the good baron, but I was loyal to him; I gave him a daughter, and later a son, Werner - you've met him."

"Did we meet your daughter too?" Coulson asked, almost despite his best intentions.

"I doubt this - we don't look too much alike, and she generally doesn't deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra or anything like that. She's just a crimelord back in England, you see."

Coulson honestly had to wonder when did his life reach a point when a crimelord was 'just' something worth mentioning and nothing more.

"At any rate, my husband - he never initiated me into anything of Hydra; frankly, his own knowledge of Hydra was more superficial than S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers thought; he was little more than a front to Whitehall, Malick and the rest."

"List," Coulson suggested helpfully, honestly curious despite himself.

"No, List was even dumber than my husband was," Rosalind shook her head. "With Whitehall gone, he thought that he could take over...he failed. I don't know if Malick or someone else got to him first-"

"Maybe Ward," Coulson suggested gently: now was as good as time as any to start breaking up _this_ alliance if he and Rosalind were to have a proper chance.

"No, I found him before anyone else did, including Malick," Rosalind shook her head. "He never wanted to go back to Hydra - he was more worried about Ms. Palamas. Using his skills in biomechanics and otherwise he had stabilized her, despite the massive pain and blood loss and whatever else. He is really more intelligent and educated than he gives away. He wasn't very sympathetic to my plight either, until his partner persuaded him to help me and Werner while we help her. The gifted, the alien hybrids, they arrived later, after Grant began to help me clear out the house - I don't know, in particular, what he had done to Fanucci, and I don't care. Carmichael was more intelligent, he _lived_."

"This doesn't bother you?" Coulson asked quietly.

"Malick and his cronies were going to kill me and my family and take over the family fortune," Rosalind looked him straight in the eye. "I don't care much for Hydra, neither does Marion - my daughter. Werner - he finally realized what Hydra _is_ and adjusted his attitude accordingly."

"And the gifted?"

"They approached Grant - they want him to kill Lash, in exchange for a place to belong. Grant isn't the best man on this planet, but he has honor, he had brokered a deal between them and my family too, gave me a purpose beyond that of Werner's mother and von Strucker's widow." A humorless smile graced Rosalind's lips. "I never told you, but I had a very traditional upbringing, that of a housewife and a mother. You're _not_ like my husband, you're warm, firm, kind, gentle, perfectly proportioned, **cough,** but you still planned to keep me in a very nicely furnished cell, which hit too close to home - my husband kept me in the traditional cage too, you know - children, kitchen, church, that's **it**. I cannot go back to that, I cannot."

"Instead you're going to do what? Run the ATCU?"

"With the help of Ward, and Palamas and others, yes," Rosalind admitted. "It'll be different now, not that Malick is gone and his cell is dismantled and we're done with Hydra. The people of Li Shi don't accept just everybody - maybe you can keep now the others?" She paused and added, in a less gentle voice, "unless, of course, Lash killing all of them wasn't an accident?"

"No, it wasn't part of any S.H.I.E.L.D. plan," Coulson said quietly, before asking his own question: "Are you honestly not part of any Hydra anymore?"

"Well, I am officially severing my family's ties with Hydra since my son," there was a clear note of pride in Rosalind's voice at these words, "had killed Gideon Malick, I have no ties with AIM, but Secret Empire? That's tricky, this is where I would actually need S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help because those people - they _are_ part gifted, from the start."

Coulson thought this over very carefully. "What is the Secret Empire?" he asked, trying to disguise his complete lack of knowledge of the subject. "A secret empire of what? Merovingian kings?"

"This is not something that I want to discuss with you in public," Rosalind shook her head. "Now are you going to take your hand of my knee, or will you take me, here and now, on this effing bench? I confess I'm hoping for the latter."

Coulson looked down, saw that indeed one of his hands - the human, flesh-and-blood one, was down on one of Rosalind's knees. The knee felt lovely and warm and human to his touch. He and Rosalind just stared at each other - and then he took her.

 _TBC_


	5. Chapter 5

**Something New (part 5)**

 _Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

"This was, or is, our biggest failure yet," Bobbi Morse muttered to Lance Hunter, as the two of them observed the FitzSimmons examine Mack, who apparently was some sort of gifted, if not an actual alien - his blood was now indigo rather than ordinary red, for a start. "We should've known that agent 33 would be just the beginning, and Ward would find himself _some_ sort of a team, yes. Instead, I don't know, we just focused on him leaving behind, out of focus, everything and everyone else."

Lance shrugged. "It seems bad, and it is bad, but Grant? Sooner or later, he will be dead and gone and we will be still around, provided that we don't tear each other to pieces first. Daisy is a great person and all, but, not unlike Phil and Mel, she is hands-on _completely_ , she has to be on top _all the time_ , and frankly, in a relationship? This sort of thing can get very old very quickly. I honestly hope that she gets over her hump soon enough and tries to fix things with the kid, because otherwise things will get very awkward very quickly. The kid may have some messy, mixed-up ideas, but he already lost a good part of his world on the bloody _Iliad_ , and if Phil and Mel had honestly wanted him to be one of us from the start, they should've taken him with us then and there. Instead, we let him go and didn't even pick him up until Daisy decided to do so - and I admit that to me it's a bit blurry - did she want him for his knowledge with the InHumans or just for nookie? And then Phil just fell in love with the baroness and made the latest Hydra plan easier a hundredfold - we promptly began to hand over the InHumans to them, including Lincoln."

"Lincoln escaped," Bobbi protested weakly.

"Yeah, and before long he came back with just the right sort of knowledge about Lash," Lance muttered. "He sold it very truthfully, too. I don't know if he'd been coached by Ward and Palamas, the baroness or his Elders, but either way? He got in...and he stays in."

"If he's a double-agent instead-"

"At least he's the one we know of and whom we can win over - I hope," Lance muttered. "Because we through him out, he goes right to the baroness and Ward and we're up one more enemy instead. S.H.I.E.L.D. is great in defeating enemies, but winning over people and making allies in general? This is something else - in a bad way. I talked to May - she wants to abandon the entire S.H.I.E.L.D.-InHuman project altogether. This is just wrong. Ward had outmaneuvered us before - we should've expected him to do something like that once more."

"Ward hadn't outmaneuvered us - he _beat_ us," Bobbi growled. "He paralyzed Coulson, I don't know how he had messed with Leo, and he got the alien, too. And - friends? Cohorts? This isn't right."

"As much as I enjoy you, Bob, devolve down to a level of a children's comic-book or TV series - 'I don't **want** to cure cancer; I want to turn people into dinosaurs', this sort of thing - I think we have to be mature now and move on - in the _right_ direction. It's just that," Lance grimaced, "I have no idea of how to do that. On his own - Grant was hard to defeat. With von Strucker fortune, an alien, and an improved agent 33 with him, it is going to be harder. We really need start on working how to re-persuade the InHumans that the ATCU is the bad guy and we aren't. I still think that we need Lincoln for that, and if Daisy has a hump about it because he isn't the man she thought he was, she can go and sulk as May does, I suppose."

"You're too cynical, Lance," Coulson commented, as he entered the room, alongside Campbell. How's Mack?"

"He's clearly part alien _at least_ ," Simmons commented with a shadow of her usual excitement (but then again, she still hadn't fully recovered from her trip to the alien planet either). "This isn't going to be a problem, sir?"

"Does Mack want to stay with us?" Coulson countered with a question of his own.

"Yes," Mack said simply, "I am." He gave the others an unpleasant look. "And no, I don't know how and what has happened to me, but I'm still the same man that I was before."

"I...have my doubts about that, actually," Coulson looked down at his prosthetic arm (yet another version - the previous one was lost in his last fight with Grant Ward), "but I'm keeping them to myself. Now, I already have talked to Skye - Daisy, about tomorrow, or rather - today, because it is rather early in the morning now."

"Sir?" the others immediately snapped to attention.

"Me and Roz had a discussion this night," Coulson looked a lot less in control of himself than he usually did. "We're going to continue it today, in ATCU's office."

"Sir - fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me," Bobbi twitched. "Fine, this time Grant had help, unexpected help, in fooling us. But now we know-"

"Agent Morse? No person is an island," Coulson shot back. "But the same goes for organizations. Right now, one-on-one, ATCU is stronger than we are. We need to work out how to defeat it...if it is necessary. Leo was right - Grant doesn't want to be our enemy anymore, and neither do his allies."

"Just what you were up to, this night?" Bobbi blinked.

"They talked," Lincoln answered before Coulson could, "and then they had sex - on a park bench. And then they got arrested by cops because of this, and I had to pay bail money to bail them out. And then they talked some more, and went clothes shopping, and then the baroness had us dropped here and went to her own place, to prepare for this meeting."

"...Clothes shopping?" Jemma blinked.

Coulson showed his new tie - it was very unlike him, with monkeys on it, in bright purple color. "Roz has a matching top," he said simply. "It has parrots."

"You two are in love, aren't you?" Leo asked, in a similar tone of voice.

"Yes," Coulson replied. "Now you and Simmons are coming with me - while I'm busy with Roz, you two can confront Grant and Palamas to see where they stand once and for all. Hunter, Morse, you two are going to be back-up, alongside Daisy and Lincoln. Mack, you and May are in charge of the base until we get back. Is everyone clear?"

"Yes sir!"

/

The next day was cold but sunny, with sun providing more light than warmth. This was actually strange, as lately days were warm, relatively so, but overcast, sometimes even raining. Still, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons bravely made their way to the ATCU building (oddly, in all the time of the director and the baroness courting each other, only Coulson had openly been there; the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D had to take a more covert path, and even so, none of the agents in question included the FitzSimmons, either).

"So what are you thinking?" Fitz asked Simmons, quietly, since neither of them wanted to be overheard by Coulson, or to talk to him - not now, not like this.

"This is normal," Simmons muttered back. "There's nothing here that is reminiscent of Whitehall's HQ, for example."

"Hm," Fitz grew thoughtful, as they entered the receptionist lobby of Rosalind's office in ATCU. "Maybe this is the point in question - hello, Ward."

"Hey, Fitz," Grant replied in a neutral tone of voice. "The boss lady is inside."

"Thank you," Coulson said brightly, and promptly went inside, leaving the FitzSimmons largely on their own, with back-up in the distance or not.

"Yay," Simmons couldn't help but to comment Phil's actions, before realizing that they weren't alone, not really. "Now what?"

"This is awkward," Grant looked at the younger people, then at Kara Lynn, who was also here. "Where or how do you want to start?"

"There's nothing to start," Fitz said bitterly. "You fooled us - again."

"And if I told you the truth, would you have helped me and Kara? I don't mean just you two in particular."

"Yes, if you'd helped us get Jemma back."

"Ok, I would've. This whole thing that we'd been through was unnecessary, I suppose, you're right."

More awkward silence.

"No," Jemma rubbed her head thoughtfully, "this isn't so. Not unless this would've been some sort of a TV show with us as the stars. Leo, Lance was right - no person is an island, but the same goes for organizations too, I suppose. Grant, he-"

"No, I, as the Grant in question, didn't intend to do whatever you're thinking," Grant pointed out. "After Puerto Rico, we fixed Kara's face, and we went off to Mexico, to blend into the woodwork. Coulson and you found us and dragged us back in. Maybe it was my fault, maybe I should've just grinned and beared it and went through the T.A.H.I.T.I. or whatever, but I honestly thought that Morse will apologize to Kara for what she had done and that would be the end. Instead, it started something else, something that I was only barely able to solve, and only with help from others. Maybe...maybe if I had submitted myself to Coulson from the start, back when he was planning to sell me to my elder brother, things would've been different..." He took a deep breath and continued. "But then I wouldn't have met Kara, so please forgive me, but some good did come out for me in the end, too."

"Fair enough," the FitzSimmons exchanged looks with each other, before facing the _other_ ex-agent. "Sorry about ignoring you, we didn't mean to, it's just that-"

"We don't have the same history, I got it," Kara smiled knowingly, but sadly. "You all know each other, but you don't know me-"

"Well, we know that you were one of us but you'd been captured by Hydra," Fitz spoke, uncomfortably.

"Yes, I know. And you helped me to be free from the programming, too," Kara replied with the same sad smile on her face. "Thanks for that, BTW. And congrats on returning from the alien planet _and_ getting engaged."

The FitzSimmons laughed, uncomfortably. "We're working at that," Simmons winced. "Um, were you ever in a relationship?" she asked the older woman.

"Yes. With Morse, for that matter," Kara said, immediately all business, and an unpleasant one at that. "And if you ask how it went you really just need to know that she had sold me out to Hydra for a reason - a _private_ reason, that's all. You two clearly have something special going on between the two of you - don't lose it."

"It's not that; it's just that we're kind of scared of, you know," Simmons tapped the floor with her legs, trying to come up with a proper answer.

"Yeah, I got it," Kara nodded. "The boss lady told how she was a tearful wreck on her wedding night and the night before - but then she got over it, and even had two children. You've met Werner, right?"

"Yeah," the FitzSimmons replied vaguely. They never met Werner in person (unlike May and Bobbi, for example) and thus couldn't really talk about him.

"Anyways, here's some helpful advice for you two - what to do _after_ you're married," Kara continued helpfully, after she thrust some book to the younger couple. Since it was a book, meaning - knowledge and information, the FitzSimmons took it, opened it, and read it, some.

"Hah," they said after a while, looked at each other, made some mental calculations and continued to read it.

 _TBC_


End file.
